Northern Ireland Parliament Research Articles

Ulster Unionist Political Thought in the Era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998

Abstract This article examines Ulster Unionist political thought, in its widest sense, against the backdrop of the Northern Ireland Troubles. During this period, Ulster Unionists sought to resist nationalist and republican arguments for the unification of Ireland and to articulate their position to supporters and wider audiences. As Direct Rule from London followed the suspension of the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont in 1972 and its abolition the following year, internal unionist debate intensified over the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. Defining Ulster Unionism broadly, at a time when its organisational forms were proliferating, the article considers the Ulster Unionist Party and its offshoot Vanguard, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party and the paramilitary organisations, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, and their affiliated political bodies. The article analyses, in turn, the four competing unionist visions of the future: a return to majority-rule devolution; independence; closer integration with Great Britain; and power-sharing devolution. Not attempting a detailed consideration of the policy proposals, the article instead explores the connections forged between Ulster Unionist political ideas, some of them of long pedigree, and wider debates. It shows that, at a time of considerable change for the United Kingdom, Ulster Unionist argument reflected—much more than is currently understood, and sometimes in a pronounced form—a wide range of interconnected contemporary British disputes. These not only concerned the constitution, nationality and sovereignty, but also permissiveness, political parties, decline, the end of empire, Thatcherism and European integration.

The Enigma of Arthur Griffith: 'Father of Us All' by Colum Kenny (review)

Reviews The Enigma of Arthur Griffith: ‘Father of Us All’, Colum Kenny (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2020), 323 pages. Just inside the entrance to Leinster House hang imposing portraits of seminal figures from the history of Ireland’s long and often bitter struggle for freedom from the cosh of British imperialism and the baleful consequences of colonisation. It is not necessary to be a history buff to quickly recognise the names and faces of Robert Emmett, W T Cosgrave or Michael Collins, but the face of Arthur Griffith is more likely than not to provoke a vaguer response. Yet Griffith is the man whom Collins insisted was the ‘Father of us all’, a glowing accolade from a credible source and one that makes its way into the subtitle of Colum Kenny’s fascinating biography of Griffith. Not yet a century dead, after a life lived right at the heart of the maelstrom of the events leading to partition and the foundation of ‘the Free State’, and indeed often in the driving seat, it seems odd that Griffith’s memory has faded so quickly while other names have found a fixed, if disputed, place in the firmament of founding heroes. If this book is about anything it is about the placing of Griffith high in that firmament. The main title of the book, The Enigma of Arthur Griffith, suggests that perhaps the answer to public disregard of Griffith lies in Griffith himself. Was he an enigmatic person, mysterious and difficult to comprehend? As Kenny unfolds the Griffith narrative, it becomes clear that the real enigma is not Griffith at all but the fact of his consignment to the margins of memory. Certainly, by the end of this meticulously researched biography Griffith himself is no enigma. Rather, his life and times, his context, persona, principles and perceptions are laid bare. Stripped away, too, are layers of misunderstanding, clouded judgement, skewed analysis and misrepresentation which have done Griffith’s memory no favours. By the end, it is possible to see that Collins’s powerful accolade was laid on deserving shoulders. Griffith lived in times of political high drama, his life an endless swirl of associations and friendships with the entire cast of legendary names that brought Ireland out of the doldrums and on the pathway to the modern world. He took no active part in the Rising, but he was no mere spectator. A man of action and ideas, who drove the debate, his writings, his ideas and principles, are both warp and weft in the rough fabric of that watershed time in Irish history. He was the Studies • volume 109 • number 434 237 Summer 2020: Book Reviews founder of Sinn Féin, President of Dáil Éireann and, crucially, chairman of the team which negotiated the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. He was destined to be the man who carried the blame for partition in many eyes but, as Colum Kenny points out early on, the Northern Ireland Parliament was already up and running when the Treaty negotiations commenced. I sometimes walk past the house in which Griffith and his wife and children lived in Clontarf, and which remembers him in a simple plaque at the front door. It reads: ‘From 1911 until his death in 1922 this was the home of Arthur Griffith, Patriot and Statesman. His Monument. An Ireland Free’. Left to his own devices, it is unlikely he would ever have owned his own home, for the workaholic artisan printer turned writer, editor, polemicist, politician, did not know the meaning of rest or personal reward when it came to promoting the cause of Irish freedom. He was one of Dublin’s poor who, by his own innate curiosity and genius, made of himself a self-educated intellectual who could hold his own and shine in any company in the arts, music, politics and the pub. He never earned enough to buy the house in Clontarf. Instead, his friends and supporters took up a collection after he married and bought the house for him. The list of contributors tells its own story of how highly he was regarded. Look at some of the names among the two hundred and fifty...

A Tale as Old as (Devolved) Time? Sewel, Stormont and the Legislative Consent Convention

AbstractThe legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK’s uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK’s territorial governance post‐devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the ‘Sewel Convention’, the convention’s roots are often traced to the commitments made by Lord Sewel during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. This article demonstrates, however, that the convention has a far deeper history that long predated Lord Sewel’s comments and goes back to the dawn of devolution in the United Kingdom, namely, the Northern Ireland Parliament that existed between 1921 and 1972. The article charts the development of the legislative consent convention from its roots in the failure of the UK government to challenge directly the Northern Ireland government over local government franchise reform in 1921, to its continued survival, even when Stormont collapsed in 1972, and argues that the convention survived owing to its role as a device of convenience and pragmatism for politicians in Westminster.

A Functional Analysis of UK Debates in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

In 2010, the UK held its first ever televised debates for Prime Minister, featuring Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg. At the same time debates were held in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. These “regional” UK debates were a mixed bag. The debate in Northern Ireland included candidates for members of the Northern Ireland parliament; the debate in Scotland featured candidates running for the UK parliament, and the Wales debate included both kinds of candidates. The debates featured a mixture of issues, touching on “regional” and UK questions and candidates. Previous research has studied the three UK debates (Benoit & Benoit-Bryan, 2013); this study applies Functional Theory to three debates, one from Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Overall in these three debates acclaims were more common than attacks and defenses were the least common function. Incumbent party candidates acclaimed and defended more, and attacked less, than challengers. This relationship was particularly strong when these politicians discussed their records in office (past deeds). The candidates in these debates discussed policy more than character. The participants acclaimed more and attacked less when discussing general goals and ideals.

Overcoming Working-Class Ulster Loyalism's Resistance to Theatricality after the Peace Process

On November 24 2006, the veteran Loyalist paramilitary activist Michael Stone entered Northern Ireland's Parliament buildings carrying an array of weapons. He was immediately apprehended and placed under arrest. At his hearing, Stone surprised the courtroom by claiming that his actions did not constitute a terrorist attack but, were, in fact, a piece of performance art. This paper takes Stone's plea as a provocation, not for the veracity or otherwise of the claim, but for the very existence of the language of theatricality in working-class Loyalist discourse, itself, perhaps, something of a surprise. Ulster's working-class Loyalist communities’ attitudes to theatre and performance have historically tended to range between indifference and antipathy. This article examines the influences that have informed these attitudes – religious views, an industrial history and a perception that theatre and performance are something for the ‘other side’. The article then engages with some of the small number of theatre and performance initiatives that have emerged to examine the struggles faced by such interventions. The article concludes by arguing that, in order for working-class Loyalist communities to proceed with confidence in the post-Peace Process environment, that new modes of expression, representation and performance need to be achieved.

Neither Irish nor British: the identities of sculpture in Northern Ireland, 1921-1951

This article examines sculpture, in the form of war memorials, architectural carving for state institutions and fine art works, in addition to an analysis of the exhibiting patterns of local sculptors, in order to explore the complications of Northern Ireland's identity and political relationships from 1921-51. The example of Northern Ireland, physically connected to the south of Ireland yet politically located within Great Britain from 1921, is illustrative of the effect of circumstance, nationality, identity and politics on art. State sculptural commissions were continually awarded to British, rather than Northern Irish artists - from the erection of First World War memorials during the 1920s, to the construction of Northern Ireland's Parliament Buildings - according to the dominant political agenda, epitomized by Leonard Stanford Merrifield's (1880-1943) statue of Lord Edward Carson erected in 1933. Officially Northern Ireland and its citizens were British, yet local sculptors such as Sophia Rosamond P...

KEVIN MATTHEWS. Fatal Influence: The Impact of Ireland on British Politics, 1920-1925. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. 2004. Pp. xvi, 317. Cloth $79.95, paper $39.95

In this detailed study of British politics in the early 1920s, Kevin Matthews argues that Ireland did not, as is often thought, disappear from the British political agenda as soon as Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State were established. He is certainly right. Whether the general consensus on this point has been quite as complete as he suggests is, however, perhaps less certain. After all, there has been no doubting the fact that, as H. A. L. Fisher put it in August 1924, “the old feeling” about Ireland remained “very intense” among Conservatives—the backwoodsmen especially. Their bitter sense of betrayal had already caused the decade's (maybe the century's) most famous political assassination, the fall of David Lloyd George, and blighted the careers of his high-flying Conservative allies Austen Chamberlain and Lord Birkenhead. The government's embarrassment over the implementation of the boundary provisions of the treaty, and over the Northern Ireland Parliament's unilateral dismantling of key provisions of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, is likewise familiar fare.

The Origins and Early Years of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition

, women in Northern Ireland were virtually absent from national political life. Rarely did the major parties in either the nationalist or the Unionist community grant women a meaningful voice in policy decisions, or serious leadership roles in the formal political process. During its fifty-year existence, only nine women served in the Northern Ireland Parliament (Stormont). Of the eighteen Northern Ireland MPs elected to the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster in June, , three are women; only three others have ever sat at Westminster since the creation of Northern Ireland in . No Northern Ireland woman has yet been elected to the European Parliament. Gender discrimination in Ulster’s political life derives from several sources. From  to , Northern Ireland was ruled directly by the British government, the result of unrelenting civil and sectarian strife known in the province as the “Troubles.” A quarter of a century of sectarian violence certainly discouraged many women from trying to enter the formal political system, as public officials were frequently targets for both the Irish Republican Army and for Protestant paramilitaries. More important, polarization between the two communities bred mutual suspicion between Catholic and Protestant women, undermining their potential for collective political action.1 During the s and early s, women channeled their civic energies into community-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and avoided traditional political mechanisms. As one activist put it, “ What passes for politics in Northern Ireland is limited and the base for formal political participation is very narrow, structured as it is by both community divisions and violence.”2 Northern Ireland was, as one activist described it, an “armed patriarchy.” 3 Constance B. Rynder

Sir James Craig and the constrution of Parliament Buildings at Stormont

Architecture has its political uses: public buildings being the ornament of a country; it establishes a nation, draws people and commerce, makes the people love their native country, which passion is the original of all great actions in a Commonwealth.Sir Christopher WrenWhen the prince of Wales formally opened the new Northern Ireland Parliament Buildings at Stormont on 16 November 1932, it brought to an end over ten years of controversy, delay, confusion, and wrangling over both finance and design. Although approval to build a new parliament house and administrative offices was given in the autumn of 1922, and preliminary work began on the site in 1923, the above-ground foundation stone was not laid until 1928, and the departmental offices were not occupied until April 1931. There is an extensive literature which stresses the political significance of the architecture of civic and public buildings such as parliament houses, law-courts, government offices and even theatres. Other writers have noted the linkages between architecture, empire, nationalism and state formation. Thomas Metcalf commented that distinctive architectural forms ‘sought to manifest the ideals of imperialism’ and were designed to enhance ‘the hold of Empire over ruler and ruled alike’. For architects such as Herbert Baker, classical design, with its monumentality and ideals of law, order and government, was the only architectural form appropriate for the representation of empire. This was an architecture which gave a ‘visible shape to the new imperialism of the turn of the twentieth century’.

Forum or Farce ? The failure of political dialogue in Northern Ireland

Ever since the old Northern Ireland parliament was prorogued by the Westminster government m 1972, there have been numerous attempts to establish a simulacrum of democratic representation, as a transitional point towards a new dispensation which could accommodate not one, but two, political communities. All have fallen foul of a basic contradiction. For such projects to succeed, Northern Ireland nationalists would have had to be able to suffuse the political culture of the region with a new liberal-pluralist value system. Yet through the long protagonism of the conflict, unionists have adamandy resisted any break from majoritarian values, while nationalists have increasingly acquired the conservative traits formerly characteristic of the unionist monopoly. Robin Wilson is the former editor of Fortnight magazine. He was co-founder of the Opsahl commission and is a member of the executive of the British Insh Association. He is director of Democratic Dialogue, a think tank he established in 1995.

‘Protestantism Before Party!’: The Ulster Protestant League in the 1930s

The Ulster Protestant League (UPL), founded in I93I, has so far received scant historical attention. Where it has been alluded to, it has usually been mistakenly labelled as fascist,' or simply viewed as a group of fanatics which for a short time made a nuisance of itself. However, marginal as the UPL was as a political force, its role in Northern Ireland politics in the I930S is a subject worth studying to the end of achieving a more informed historical appreciation of Ulster protestant behaviour. Much of the impetus behind the formation of the UPL came from its Scottish counterpart, the Scottish Protestant League (SPL), which had been in existence since I920.2 Its leader, Alexander Ratcliffe, frequently spoke at protestant meetings in Ulster. In March and April I 93i he undertook a speaking tour of the province out of which, on 25 April, the UPL emerged as a parallel organization to the SPL.3 Relations between the two groups were at first close, but were later soured on account of a bizarre incident in the Northern Ireland Parliament Buildings on 2 May I933. On that afternoon, during a conducted tour of the Stormont building, two SPL members, Mrs Mary Ratcliffe (wife of the SPL leader) and Charles Forrester, attacked and damaged a painting which appeared to depict the Orangeman 's hero of the battle of the Boyne, King William III, being blessed by the pope. Although the painting was thus historically accurate King William's triumph at the Boyne was a matter for celebration in the Vatican protestant extremists considered it 'blasphemous' and all the more sacrilegious for being hung in the parliament of Northern Ireland.4 However, the bulk of the UPL considered the drastic action taken by their Scottish visitors as unseemly to say the least. At this time the UPL was still, by and large, on good terms with the Ulster Unionist governing party led by the prime minister, Lord Craigavon. The Unionists, for their part, were anxious to keep the UPL in check. The Unionist M.P. for Belfast St Anne's, Major John Henry McCormick, was a leading figure in the UPL from its formation, and several other Unionists, including the future prime minister Basil Brooke (then minister of agriculture) spoke at UPL meetings in the years I93I-3. Indeed, the UPL used the Unionist Party headquarters in Glengall Street in Belfast for most of their routine meetings. The

Liberalism in north Antrim, 1900–14

In the general election of January 1906, R. G. Glendinning, a taciturn baptist linen manufacturer of Belfast, won the North Antrim parliamentary seat. The significance of this event was his success in an overwhelmingly protestant constituency at the expense of the highly articulate and intelligent unionist sitting member, William Moore, the principal architect of the Ulster Unionist Council and the leader of the unionist campaign to expose the devolutionary dangers of ‘Macdonnellism’. Furthermore Glendinning had campaigned as a ‘liberal unionist’, but had been condemned as a home ruler by his opponent and indeed upon arrival in the house of commons took his seat on the liberal government benches. Some years later, in 1913, despite the heightened political temperature, it was still possible for a meeting on 24 October in Ballymoney town hall attended by some four or five hundred protestants to denounce ‘the lawless policy of Carsonism’, and for this same meeting to be addressed by such noted nationalists as Captain Jack White, Sir Roger Casement and Mrs Alice Stopford Green. Their audience was invited to sign an anti-covenant devised by White and closely modelled on, though directly opposed to, the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant. As late as 1925 an independent protestant candidate, George Henderson, representing the Unbought Tenants Association, secured one of the seven County Antrim seats in the Northern Ireland parliament, thus preventing the election of an official unionist, R. D. Megaw. Then there is the interesting phenomenon of the Independent Orange Order which in the years before 1914 had established itself more firmly in north Antrim than anywhere else. The area also threw up in this period a number of prominent individuals who became active in non-unionist politics, of whom the Reverend J. B. Armour, the Reverend D. D. Boyle, John Pinkerton and Samuel Craig McElroy are perhaps the best known. Finally Bally money and the Route was the epicentre of the Ulster tenant-right movement in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

Book Review

Book Review Get access The Statutes Revised Northern Ireland. Second Edition. Volume 2. Acts of the Northern Ireland Parliament 1950–1959. Belfast, HMSO 1982. xvii and 773pp. (including index). Looseleaf in binder. Not sold separately. A.G.D. A.G.D. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Statute Law Review, Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer 1982, Pages 123–128, https://doi.org/10.1093/slr/3.2.123 Published: 01 July 1982

A Study of Conflict in Northern Ireland: An Application of Metagame Theory

This paper summarizes a study of the conflict in Northern Ireland using the particular analytic technique of metagame theory known as the analysis of options. Four major alternative political structures were identified and the relative stability of each was analyzed. The alternatives were: (1) a United Ireland, (2) Dominion status or legislative independence for Northern Ireland, (3) Colonial status with a legislative Assembly subordinate to the British Government, and token representation at Westminster, (4) an integrated Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Alternatives (2) and (3) were evaluated with and without a Council of Ireland or other link with the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest the most stable structure would be Dominion status for Northern Ireland with constitutional guarantees for participation by minorities in the processes of government.

Recent British government publications

This article follows an earlier one with the same title which appeared in R Q, 1 1, 1, Fall 1971, pp. 3941. As before, it consists of a number of brief reviewsof some significant, recent British government publications likely to be of interest to North American libraries. United States libraries should order from Pendagon House Inc., 220 University Avenue, Palo Alto, California 94301. There is a 20 percent discount for libraries on the prices quoted. Canadian libraries should order from their nearest Information Canada Bookstore. Of topical interest is the 361 page Report of the Committee on Privacy, of which Kenneth Younger was chairman. This committee was appointed to consider to recommend whether legislation is needed to give further protection to the individual citizen and to commercial and industrial interests against intrusions into privacy by private persons, organizations, or companies. After a general review of the concept of privacy and its importance, the committee examined those areas of most concern in this area: invasion of privacy by the pmss, radio and television, credit rating agencies, banks, employers, students and teachers, doctors, neighbors and landlords, salesmen, private detectives, and industrial espionage. The report includes a section on technical surveillance devices and computers insofar as they concern privacy. It was issued as Cmnd. 5012. Price $8. SBN 10 1 150120 X. Volume II of British Foreign Policy in ‘the Second World War by Sir Llewellyn Woodward has now appeared; volume I was noticedin the previous article in this series. The timespan of this present volume is from June 194 1, when Germany invaded Russia, until the end of 1943. The major events dealt with are Anglo-Russian relationships, culminating in the Teheran Conference; events leading to Japan entering the war; matters affecting General de Gaulle and the Allied governments; differences between the British and United States governments over policy towards Italian surrender; and the formulation of the Atlantic Charter. Price $18. SBN 11 630068 X. The situation in Northern Ireland remains in the news headlines. Two recent reports illusttate dramatically the gulf which has been created there between Protestant and Catholic, leading to frequent outbursts of death and violence. The calm, measured prose of these reports describes scenes which have become a part of the almost daily turmoil in Northern Ireland. Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in I969 is a twovolume report of a Tribunal of Inquiry, Chairman: Mr. Justice Scat-man. It was presented to the Parliament of Northern Ireland as Cmnd. 566. Price $12. SBN 337 10566 9. Slighter in format is the 45 page Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Inquire into the

The future development of the parliament and government of Northern Ireland, pp 12, HMSO Belfast, Oct 1971, 15 ½p

The future development of the parliament and government of Northern Ireland, pp 12, HMSO Belfast, Oct 1971, 15 ½p

RECENT BRITISH GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS

This article follows an earlier one with the same title which appeared in R Q, 1 1, 1, Fall 1971, pp. 3941. As before, it consists of a number of brief reviewsof some significant, recent British government publications likely to be of interest to North American libraries. United States libraries should order from Pendagon House Inc., 220 University Avenue, Palo Alto, California 94301. There is a 20 percent discount for libraries on the prices quoted. Canadian libraries should order from their nearest Information Canada Bookstore. Of topical interest is the 361 page Report of the Committee on Privacy, of which Kenneth Younger was chairman. This committee was appointed to consider to recommend whether legislation is needed to give further protection to the individual citizen and to commercial and industrial interests against intrusions into privacy by private persons, organizations, or companies. After a general review of the concept of privacy and its importance, the committee examined those areas of most concern in this area: invasion of privacy by the pmss, radio and television, credit rating agencies, banks, employers, students and teachers, doctors, neighbors and landlords, salesmen, private detectives, and industrial espionage. The report includes a section on technical surveillance devices and computers insofar as they concern privacy. It was issued as Cmnd. 5012. Price $8. SBN 10 1 150120 X. Volume II of British Foreign Policy in ‘the Second World War by Sir Llewellyn Woodward has now appeared; volume I was noticedin the previous article in this series. The timespan of this present volume is from June 194 1, when Germany invaded Russia, until the end of 1943. The major events dealt with are Anglo-Russian relationships, culminating in the Teheran Conference; events leading to Japan entering the war; matters affecting General de Gaulle and the Allied governments; differences between the British and United States governments over policy towards Italian surrender; and the formulation of the Atlantic Charter. Price $18. SBN 11 630068 X. The situation in Northern Ireland remains in the news headlines. Two recent reports illusttate dramatically the gulf which has been created there between Protestant and Catholic, leading to frequent outbursts of death and violence. The calm, measured prose of these reports describes scenes which have become a part of the almost daily turmoil in Northern Ireland. Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in I969 is a twovolume report of a Tribunal of Inquiry, Chairman: Mr. Justice Scat-man. It was presented to the Parliament of Northern Ireland as Cmnd. 566. Price $12. SBN 337 10566 9. Slighter in format is the 45 page Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Inquire into the

Legislation and Mental Health in Northern Ireland

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: as my contribution to this morning's topic, “Legislation and Mental Health,” I had hoped to be able to give you the outlines of the proposals contained in a new Mental Health Bill under way in Northern Ireland. Time has not been on my side, as it just happens the Bill is being presented to-day for its first reading in the Northern Ireland Parliament, and as only after that will it be available for publication, I am not able to make use of it as the basis of my paper this morning.